Polly Courtice, Director, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership THE TOP 50 SUSTAINABILITY BOOKS 1 A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold (1949) 2 Silent Spring Rachel Carson (1962) 3 Unsafe At Any Speed Ralph Nader (1965) 4 The Population Bomb Paul L. Ehrlich (1968) 5 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth R. Buckminster Fuller (1969) 6 The Limits to Growth Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III (1972) 7 Small Is Beautiful E.F. Schumacher (1973) 8 Gaia James Lovelock (1979) 9 The Turning Point Fritjof Capra (1982) 10 Our Common Future (‘The Brundtland Report’) World Commission onEnvironment and Development (1987) 11 The Dream of the Earth Thomas Berry (1988) 12 A Fate Worse Than Debt Susan George (1988) 13 Staying Alive Vandana Shiva (1989) 14 Blueprint for a Green Economy David Pearce, Anil Markandya and Edward B. Barbier (1989) 15 For the Common Good Herman Daly and John B. Cobb Jr (1989) 16 Human Scale Development Manfred Max-Neef (1989) 17 Changing Course Stephan Schmidheiny and Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) (1992) 18 The Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken (1993) 19 Maverick Ricardo Semler (1993) 20 When Corporations Rule the World David C. Korten (1995) 21 Biomimicry Janine M. Benyus (1997) 22 Cannibals with Forks John Elkington (1997) 23 The Hungry Spirit Charles Handy (1997) 24 Banker to the Poor Muhammad Yunus (1998) 25 The Crisis of Global Capitalism George Soros (1998) 26 Factor Four Ernst von Weizsäcker, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (1998) 27 False Dawn John Gray (1998) 28 Development as Freedom Amartya Sen (1999) 29 No Logo Naomi Klein (1999) 30 Natural Capitalism Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (1999) 31 Business as Unusual Anita Roddick (2000) 32 The Mystery of Capital Hernando de Soto (2000) 33 The Civil Corporation Simon Zadek (2001) 34 Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser (2001) 35 The Skeptical Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg (2001) 36 Cradle to Cradle William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002) 37 Globalization and its Discontents Joseph E. Stiglitz (2002) 38 The Corporation Joel Bakan (2004) 39 Presence Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers (2004) 40 The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid C.K. Prahalad (2004) 41 The River Runs Black Elizabeth C. Economy (2004) 42 Capitalism as if the World Matters Jonathon Porritt (2005) 43 Capitalism at the Crossroads Stuart L. Hart (2005) 44 Collapse Jared Diamond (2005) 45 The End of Poverty Jeffrey D. Sachs (2005) 46 The Chaos Point Ervin Laszlo (2006) 47 Heat George Monbiot (2006) 48 An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore (2006) 49 When the Rivers Run Dry Fred Pearce (2006) 50 The Economics of Climate Change Nicholas Stern (2007) Conclusion Mike Peirce, Deputy Director, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership Inevitably, with any attempt to define a “best of” list, there will be criticisms. Most obviously the titles appear to reflect the alumni – dominated by men from rich northern hemisphere countries with just ten women appearing among 61 authors. Also the selected books mostly advocate reforming or changing the current system, to the exclusion of more imaginative offerings, Voltaire’s Candide, for example. Others might argue the list is too modern, with nothing older than Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac in 1949, and no Thomas Malthus or Charles Darwin or that it is too dry, preferring commission reports to, say, the academic passion of EO Wilson or the Romantic poets. Tom Burke, the veteran environmentalist, argues there are a number of important books missing, such as the Only One Earth by Barbara Ward and Renee Dubos. “Others that really mattered are The Global 2000 report, commissioned by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, which makes chilling reading when you realise how much we already understood then,” he said. “Ivan Illich is missing completely and was better than Schumacher, so is Barry Commoner who really put technology into the equations for the first time. I would also have included the Blueprint for Survival which really kicked off the whole process of thinking about sustainable development. Jonathan Schell’s ‘The Fate of the Earth’, describing the consequences of nuclear war, should also be on the list, not the least because it was written by someone who could write.” But the Skeptical Environmentalist, the critical book by Bjorn Lomborg should “definitely not” be on the list, said Burke. “It is a confidence trick in which none of what he says stands up to informed examination.”